I said I only use two firefox extensions and that's mostly true. https://t.iss.one/geektips/104

I did need to use the excellent Down Them All extension to download about 400 mp3s from a website on one page. You can select the URL and it'll automatically add all mp3s and start downloading them. I'm gonna make an audiobook from it. 6GB to maybe who knows super small.

Down Them All — you can filter to only download images, music or videos.

In Fotoxx image editor you can edit the Custom menu just add the functions which are your favorites and used most often. These are mine.

Montage
Color Mode
Mashup
Crop
resize
Markup
Blur

sudo apt install deadbeef

DeadBeef is the only audio player that I could find that plays more than 132 chapters for m4b chaptered audiobooks on Linux. edit: qmmp also can but its a KDE app so avoid.

VLC maxes out displaying 132 and Cozy won't even add the m4b audiobook to its library let alone play it. Edit: Evidently Cozy eventually adds it and same problem as VLC only displays up to 132 chapters.

BookPlayer (free) on iOS is probably what I'll use to play these 132+ chaptered m4b audiobooks since DeadBeef can't even resume last played position (not for m4b audiobooks just perhaps from mp3s or opus music files). BookPlayer can show 1,138 chapters as I've tested it out previously.

sudo apt install cudatext

Cudatext is a text editor which I used to Shuffle Lines. I wanted to shuffle some videos to upload to a telegram channel just one per day.

GMIC-Qt 500+ filters. I previously mentioned to install GMIC as a Krita plugin. I much prefer it as a standalone app.

Just download deb file for Ubuntu 20.04 (for Linux Mint 20.3) gmic_3.0.2_ubuntu20-04_focal_amd64.deb
https://gmic.eu/download.html


To see an overview of all the filters GMIC 3.0.0 (released December 2021) can do see here
https://discuss.pixls.us/t/release-of-gmic-3-0/17226

Or here is the gallery from the homepage which I made into a PDF https://t.iss.one/geektips/160

Tried I believe all Linux PDFs readers evince, xpdf, qpdf and others and not one has dark mode. Rather just inverted mode which hurts the eyes at night. Also I believe if you have white text with a black background it’ll invert that which is exactly what you are trying to avoid. On iOS I believe Adobe Reader, Documents app and even Books Apple have dark mode.

Also Linux Mint 20.3 has a nice Notes app but unusable me as all the colors are super bright and it has no dark mode.

I spoke too soon there are two PDF readers that do have true dark mode.

Master PDF Editor is $70 but you can use the free version to enable dark mode. Works with text and scanned text (images).

Settings | Display and check Replace Document Colors
change Page background to almost black color and text to either white or light gray.

The free version can still annotate and highlight text but can't optimize PDFs (use ocrmypdf for that), watermarks, add headers, backgrounds, edit PDF text.
Okular (KDE PDF reader) but I despise it.

Best one I plan to use for night mode / dark mode is Zathura
No highlighting or thumbnails though.

sudo apt install zathura

nano ~/.config/zathura/zathurarc

Paste the following into the zathurarc text configuration file and save it. You don't need do create this configuration file as it already has dark mode CTRL-R but only do this if you don't want pure black and pure white colors.

set recolor true
set recolor-darkcolor "#dcdccc"
set recolor-lightcolor "#1f1f1f"

Keyboard shortcut keys since there isn't any menu

/ search for text
n next search result
shift+n previous search result

d toggles dual page display
o open another PDF
r rotate page
s fit to screen
- zoom out
+ zoom in
Tab show index
CTRL-P print
CTRL-R toggle recolor (dark mode)
F5 Presentation mode
F11 fullscreen

Add comic book support cbz cbr files and you can use dark mode on the images too
sudo apt install zathura-cb

edit: after using Zathura for a couple of weeks I really love it. I wish there was a show properties that's about it.

Zathura default dark mode

Zathura modified dark mode by modifying the configuration text file.

Local offline dictionary instead of an online dictionary

sudo apt install dict xfce4-dict dictd dict-gcide dict-wn

xfce4-dict is a dictionary as seen in the screenshot
dictd is the database server for dictionaries
dict-gcide is The Collaborative International Dictionary of English
dict-wn WordNet 3.0 English dictionary
dict is a terminal dictionary

dict baby

searches for baby and use Shift Page Up/Down to navigate
or use
dict baby | less and use Page Up/Down to navigate and q to quit.

In Preferences set in Dictionary Server tab set Server: localhost
in terminal for dict set to localhost
dict —host localhost
dict -S (show available search strategies)

Tested out a bunch of ebook readers and I believe at this stage Foliate is the best one. It supports epub, mobi, kindle, fictionbook and comic book.

Just download and install the deb file from the homepage. If you installed the dictionaries in the previous post you can set Foliate when you double click on a word to open up one of the default offline dictionaries.

You can also easily add a custom theme. It does not have grayscale for images just invert unfortunately but I couldn't find an epub reader that does on Linux.

Also don't bother with text to speech as I tried both of them and they are both horrendous.

in XFCE these are the Settings | Keyboard | Application Shortcuts that are worth memorizing.

I did replace xfce-taskmanager with gnome-system-monitor but kept the shortcut the same. I added Super+Z to open app launcher.

Print to take a screenshot
Shift+Print to select a region to screenshot

Ctrl+Alt+Escape xkill which will give you an X and click on a frozen app and it'll do a kill -9 (forced kill) of all instances of app

Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal

XFCE Window Tiling Keyboard Shortcuts

Settings | Window Manager

I keep four workspaces and to flip between them just use Ctrl-Alt+Right.

Window Tiling helps you organize windows to say a 1/4 of the screen top right corner Super+Page Up (keypad). You don't have to memorize these ones just know Super+ a key on the keypad does windows tiling in XFCE.

Super+Left (keypad) or Super+Right (keypad) makes the window 1/2 the screen.

XFCE Windows Tiling quickly put four apps into their respective corners taking up 1/4 of the screen with keyboard shortcuts.

Stream opus, mp3, FLAC music collection on Linux Mint to android, eyefoam, ipad clients. Install proftpd server and use foobar2000 (free) app.

sudo apt install proftpd

lock users into home directory
sudo nano /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf

uncomment by removing the # and save file
#DefaultRoot
(change to)
DefaultRoot

If you wish to share music amongst multiple users then create a user named ftpmusic which can be shared with many household users. Otherwise just use your existing username/password to login to the ftp server.

disallow ftpmusic user from logging in via SSH
sudo nano /etc/shells
add the following to the end of the file then save it.
/bin/false

create ftpmusic user and choose a password
sudo useradd -m -s /bin/false ftpmusic

sudo passwd ftpmusic
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully

restart proftpd
sudo systemctl restart proftpd

set proftpd to start on boot
sudo systemctl start proftpd

check status of proftpd
sudo systemctl status proftpd

foobar2000 app in Settings | DSP Manager I set Crossfader to 20000ms (20 seconds) and Skip Silence minimum 5000ms (5 seconds).

Now in foobar iOS or Android app add server go to Media Servers and +Add New
This is assuming your ip is 192.168.0.19

ftp://ftpmusic:[email protected]

Just browse to your music folder and then a subdirectory folder and tap and hold and choose Create a New Playlist. Go to your playlists and play it from there. When streaming you cant jump forward or backward in a song unless you download that folder to your foobar2000 Music Folder.

Foobar2000 doesn’t have a sleep timer but on iOS just set your Timer in the Clock App to Stop Playing and any music or audiobook will stop when timer ends.

Openboard.ch is a free app for a White board in an educational setting. Here are some of the applications it comes with.

Openboard interactives or whatever they're called.